The Quick-change Artist

On The 6 A.m. Television News, He's Little Mr. Sunshine: On His

Morning Radio Show, He's The Angry Provocateur. Which Is The Real

Clive Thomas? Both.

June 22, 1986|By Rowland Stiteler

IF HE WERE ANYONE BUT CLIVE Thomas Cuthbertson, his daily behavioral patterns alone would be enough to get him certified as a schizophrenic.

He rises at 4:30 each morning for a whole-earth breakfast, to be consumed while watching television or listening to the radio. By 5 a.m. he has mounted his massive BMW motorcycle, which is equipped with a windshield and saddle bags and looks like something that any self-respecting state trooper would covet, and roars off into the darkness. The sound of the motorcycle's engine is masked by the piercing volume of its radio, which is almost as menacing as the look of the rider himself. Dressed in a black leather jacket and white racing helmet that covers both head and face, he looks like some anonymous 20th century gladiator.

By 5:25 a.m. he has arrived, ready for yet another day of offering his personal dogma to the masses. He quickly sheds the outer layer of leather and plexiglass to reveal a designer sport coat, tie and jeans. He has instantly been transformed from road warrior to Rotarian, from the waist up at least. And it is obvious that the upper half of this being has control as he greets those who he encounters in the predawn hours with a boyish smile and a well- enunciated and almost revoltingly cheerful, ''Good morning, it's Tuesday!''

But by midmorning he has undergone an abrupt and radical Jekyll/Hyde personality change. He sheds the effervescent personality as quickly as he did the motorcycle jacket. At the bat of an eye he changes himself into a frothing nihilist, desperate to warn anyone who will listen that the institutions they trust have betrayed them and the world is most definitely going to hell in a handbasket. His message is, to quote a line from his favorite movie, Network, ''I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.'' He'll spend the next four hours unabashedly ranting, delivering his value judgments and societal warnings in the same demeanor as one who screams ''Fire!'' in a crowded movie theater.

By early afternoon the air of delirium has disappeared from his voice, and he's calm and pleasant again and ready for the odd leaky faucet or eviction notice that is the attendant task of anyone who owns $400,000 or so worth of rental houses.

Shortly after sundown he's in bed, resting himself for another day that will duplicate the one just ended. All the emoting, all the extemporaneous tirades, all the peaks and valleys are just part of his average day.

THIS MERCURIAL BEHAVIORAL PATTERN would doubtless earn most people a trip to a psychiatric evaluation unit. But 43-year-old Clive Thomas Cuthbertson is not most people. And for that matter, to most people, he's not Clive Thomas Cuthbertson. The 64,000 people who see his television newscast each day and the 6,725 people who are listening during any 15-minute segment of his daily radio talk show know him only by his first and middle names. And his apparent madness has a very decided method that earns him not one but two sizeable pay checks, thank you.

Clive Thomas has been a local media double dipper for about two-and-a- half years now. He begins his day as one of the smiling, fresh-scrubbed faces broadcast into 32,000 Central Florida homes on the 6 a.m. WFTV-TV local news broadcast, and he finishes his morning broadcasting in what would appear to be a semi-controlled state of rage on his talk show on WKIS-AM radio.

When you put his behavior into context, it is closer to the stuff of a Marshall McLuhan essay than something that Sigmund Freud might have described in his writings.

For those who weren't students of a journalism or philosophy class in which Marshall McLuhan was required reading, his book The Medium Is the Message is considered the Bible of modern media theory. It holds that media influences society and society influences media in a snowballing cycle, the result of which is that our daily lives are radically altered by the mere existence of media. Clive Thomas is a flesh-and-blood being who gives validity to this theory.

Thomas literally eats, sleeps and talks in a manner that he learned through radio and television. The way he conducts his financial affairs and his social life is a product the media. His first mentors and role models were not people he met, but instead were voices he spent hours listening to on the radio.

One who doubts the totality of the manner in which media has shaped his Thomas' life might consider the basic tenet of the Clive Thomas credo:

''I believe that we are here to learn and to grow. Period. That does not involve interacting with other people; it does not involve influencing other people. I believe that it is wrong to try to tell other people how to live their lives, unless you are doing it for a radio show.''